What health Care Reform Means For Infertility Coverage

The Senate version of the recently enacted health care reform does not provide any obvious, direct relief for couples looking for infertility health insurance coverage. Upon closer inspection there are areas where our friends in Washington have taken away, and places that show a glimmer of hope. Much will convert over time as more details begin to emerge. Take a look at what can be learned from a high level summary of the bill.

I was concerned to see what help the "Patient security and Affordable Care Act" offered, if any, to couples facing infertility. One can learn very absorbing things by downloading the 2,409 page Pdf document ready online. Adobe Acrobat provides a handy word hunt feature that allows us to swiftly see what, if whatever was done to address the needs of couples trying to conceive.

Health Care

So I typed in a estimate of keyword phrases, and got the following results: Infertility: 0, Ivf: 0, Fertility: 0, In Vitro Fertilization: 0, Assistive reproduction Technology: 0

Okay so it seems that the new law does not provide any obvious direct help for combine trying to conceive. Is there indirect help? Let's try typing in "pregnancy" as see what comes up. We find twenty one entries; now we may be onto something! The entries break down to these categories:

Establishment of a reproduction assistance fund to help pregnant and parenting college students. "A sense of Congress" to study the thinking health consequences of women "resolving" pregnancy. Funding tied to state-established goals to cut teen reproduction rates. Personal responsibility programs designed to educate adolescents on abstinence, contraception, and sexually transmitted diseases. reproduction Risk appraisal Monitoring principles (Prams) as it relates to oral healthcare. discharge of cost share for counseling and pharmacotherapy for cessation of tobacco use by pregnant women.

It seems we are out of luck once again. Funding and attentiveness are allocated to preventing pregnancy, and keeping already pregnant women healthy, but nothing about helping get people pregnant.

Flexible Spending Accounts can be very useful for infertile couples. Pre-taxing helps lower costs for the very high level of unreimbursed healing expenses associated with infertility treatments. Let's see if the bill provides any help in this area? The news is not good. health Care Flexible Spending Accounts gift limits have been capped at ,500 for any plans with tax year's beginning after December 31, 2010. It still makes sense to use your Fsa to keep costs low, but a ,500 limit does not make much of a dent in a ,000 Ivf payment.

Let's not give up yet. There are those state run health exchanges to examine. Their principle purpose is to provide some level of coverage for individuals with pre-existing conditions. The funds by nature lose money for the states that currently run such programs; which means your benefit may exceed your premium. Each state is given some level of flexibility it how it will set up and run its exchange. Maybe there may be something for infertility underground amongst these exchanges.

And then there is prescribe drugs: 136 mentions, and a few that aren't associated to Medicare (the program for people over age 65). Maybe we can peruse these topics in other article. Stay tuned.

What health Care Reform Means For Infertility Coverage